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I've been a fish keeper for about 2 years now and never really thought about how much energy my fish accessories were costing me. I had purchased Photovoltaic panels shortly before i got into fish keeping so i thought it wouldn't hurt me. Long story short, I started with 1 fish tank, then 2, then 30ish... yes, 30 aquariums at/in my home!
​ ​My electric bill was roughly $200 per month before getting my solar panels. So, thats how much panels I purchased to cover a $200ish bill. A fish tank usually requires these things. 1. light 2. filter or multiple filters 3. air pump 4. heater 5. powerhead aka wave maker (usually optional) Of course, there could be way more things to plug in but the 1st 3 are the main/most common ones. they dont use up a lot of power, but im sure it adds up. Obviously, since i live in Hawaii, everything is expensive here. Gas is expensive so the price we pay per kilo-watt hour is way more pricey than the upper 48. We pay around .33-.34 cents per KWH. I heard mainland peeps pay about .09-.15 cents! But this has a setting where you can input your own kwh amount. So anyways, I bought this Belkin conserve insight energy use monitor from Amazon.com to give it a try. I tried to hook it up to multiple aquarium accessories but the plug couldnt fit into my American DJ surge protector cuz of the way it was designed. So, i plugged it into my home security tablet from Time Warner and it showed that that tablet is costing me about $1 per month to run. Not bad. I really wanted to test out a big aquarium accessory that runs 24/7 so i went outside to my 500 gallon pond, unplugged my 233 watt tetrapond pump, and plugged that into the Belkin and then plugged it back in. WOW. To my surprise, its costing me $35 per month to run. I wanted to try my 1500watt titanium heater but its only turns on when water temp drops below 82 degrees so ill try that one out later. Im still learning the Belkin monitor but i think you can set it to record for an X amount of days.  
Anyways, you can try it out on your own products like your fridge, cable box (these suck up a lot of power even when not turned on!), lights, etc. Its relatively inexpensive, too. Check it out below!
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